A lot of people revel at the strikingly minimalist design of the Apple iPhone. The glass face, the rounded edges, the metallic highlights. But just the same, people are curious as to what lies under the hood and what makes it tick.

TechOnline has posted an updated iPhone 3G teardown where they describe in detail the built-in chips as much as they should, generously letting the readers and their community contribute whenever possible.

From their teardown results, it appears that chipmakers Infineon and TriQuint contribute the most. Infineon supplies the UMTS transceiver, as well as the two-chip baseband processor. TriQuint, on the other hand, gives the iPhone 3G three power-amplifier (PA) front end modules that help in the transmission data rates.

The iPhone 3G teardown chip layout looks complicated like no other when compared to other phones these days, and it’s quite surprising to see such a number of chips inside a handheld. Read the full iPhone 3G teardown at the link below.